Synoptic Tradition in the Didache Revisited

Dr. Aaron Milavec Center for the Study of Religion and Society

University of Victoria Ever since a complete copy of the Didache was first discovered in 1873, widespread efforts have been undertaken to demonstrate that the framers of the Didache depended upon a known Gospel (usually Matthew, Luke, or both) and upon one or more Apostolic Fathers (Barnabas, Hermas, and/or Justin Martyr). In more recent times, however, most scholars have pushed back the date of composition to the late first or early second century and called into question dependency upon these sources. In the late 50s, Audet1. Glover2, and Koester3 cautiously developed this stance independent of each other. More recently, Draper4, Kloppenborg5, Milavec6, Niederwimmer7, Rordorf8, and Van de Sandt9 have argued quite persuasively in favor of this position. Opposition voices, however, are still heard. C.M. Tuckett10 of Oxford University, for example, reexamined all the evidence in 1989 and came to the conclusion that parts of the Didache "presuppose the redactional activity of both evangelists" thereby reasserting an earlier position that "the Didache here presupposes the gospels of Matthew and Luke in their finished forms."11 Clayton N. Jefford, writing in the same year independent of Tuckett, came to the conclusion that the Didache originated in the same community that produced the Gospel of Matthew and that both works had common sources but divergent purposes.12 Vicky Balabanski, in a book-length treatment of the eschatologies of Mark, Matthew, and Didache, reviewed all the evidence up until 1997 and concluded that Did. 16 was written "to clarify and specify certain aspects of Matthew's eschatology."13 This essay will weigh the evidence for and against dependence upon the Gospel of Matthew--the most frequently identified "written source" for the Didache. My gratitude goes to Willy Rordorf who first alerted me to the possibility that the Didache might have been created without any dependence upon a known Gospel and that this conclusion has a heavy bearing upon the dating and the interpretation of the text. At the end of this essay, I will join with Willy Rordorf in his final conclusions, yet, my analysis of the problem will take me in directions that he did not travel. THE EARLY HISTORY OF DATING AND IDENTIFYING SOURCES During the first eighty years after Bryennios published the text of the Didache (1983), the burning question was not focused upon whether the Didache made use of one or more of the Gospels but whether the Didache made use of the Epistle of Barnabas. Bryennios made the judgment that Barnabas, with its more primitive presentation of the Two Ways material, was the source for the Two-Ways material (Did. 1-5) of the Didache. This single fact inclined him to date the composition of the Didache between 120 and 160 C.E.--depending upon whether one takes an early or late date for the composition of the Epistle of Barnabas. Adolph Harnack, writing in the following year, wrote, "One must say without hesitation that it is the author of the Didache who used the Epistle of Barnabas and not the reverse."14 Harnack, accordingly, dated the Didache between 135 and 165 C.E. and fixed the place of origin as Egypt where Barnabas was thought to have been composed. Quite early, therefore, the dating of the Didache and its place of origin were fixed in the mid-second century so as to take into account its supposed dependence upon the Greek Epistle of Barnabas.

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While a few scholars15 held out for an earlier dating based upon the textual independence of the Didache from Barnabas, the international influence of Harnack insured that his judgment would prevail. In 1886, however, Harnack16 changed his mind after reading Taylor17 and began advocating that a Jewish catechetical manual designed for proselytes was the common source for the Two-Ways section of both the Didache and Barnabas. This line of thinking was effectively strengthened in 1900 when Schlecht discovered the Teaching of the Apostles (De Doctrina Apostolorum). The Latin text of the Teaching made reference to "light and darkness" in its opening line and omitted Did. 1:3-6--characteristics evidenced in Barnabas but absent in the Didache. This evidence for the circulation of an independent version of the Two Ways effectively buried the notion that the framers of the Didache relied upon Barnabas. This burial, however, was not definitive. In 1912, J. Armitage Robinson conducted new research into the literary construction of the Epistle of Barnabas and argued that the rhetoric and content of the entire manuscript were of one piece such that no compelling reasons existed to suppose that the Two Way section was not immediately composed by Barnabas. Robinson thus revived Harnack's early thesis (1884)--namely, that Barnabas was the source for the Two Ways section of the Didache. From this vantage point, the Teaching of the Apostles (De Doctrina Apostolorum) was then reinterpreted as a detached Latin translation of a small portion of Barnabas. The thesis of Robinson gained allegiance18 and with it came an even firmer determination that the Didache could not have been composed earlier than 140-150 C.E. In 1945, Goodspeed published a landmark article in which he was troubled by the Latin versions of Barnabas which had no Two-Way section. Goodspeed argued that "early Christian literature usually grew not by partition and reduction, but by combination and expansion,"19 and, from this, it can be deduced that the oldest version of Barnabas must have been prepared without any Two-Way section. Robinson was thus dead wrong.20 In addition, Goodspeed laid various versions of the Two-Ways material side by side and carefully tabulated the textual parallels. He concluded that, on the force of numbers alone, one can be certain that a Greek version of the Teaching of the Apostles (De Doctrina Apostolorum) stood as the source for all other versions: To recapitulate: of the 161 items in Doctrina [Teaching of the Apostles]; 77 can be

recognized in the "Life of Schnudi"; 94 [can be recognized] in both Didache and Barnabas; 104 in Barnabas; 145 in Didache. . . . The bearing of these figures is unmistakable; Doctrina closely approximates the source of all three of the other documents. . . . Nor can these relationships be reversed, so as to make Barnabas the source of Didache and Doctrina, or Didache the source of Barnabas and Doctrina.21

The upshot of this was that Harnack's later thesis (1886) which Robinson had discounted was revived. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 laid the foundation for further refuting Robinson and company. Jean-Paul Audet, a Canadian scholar writing in French, argued that the Two-Ways motif clearly used in the twelve scrolls of the Manual of Discipline conclusively demonstrated that its origin was Jewish and, consequently, that Barnabas repeated but did not originate the Two-Ways motif.22 Working on the conviction that the Two-Ways material was originally a Jewish catechetical manual designed for gentiles, Audet argued both the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas made use of this manual in their composition. Thus, when Audet's book-length commentary appeared in 1958, it consolidated the growing consensus that the Didache never made use of the Epistle of Barnabas and that both works had available to them a Jewish catechetical manual which each of them edited for their own purposes.23 While Audet's conjectures regarding the redactional history and textual reconstruction

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of the Didache has been widely questioned, his arguments regarding the hypothetical "Jewish catechetical manual" and the independence of the Didache from Barnabas has been solidly received.24 Once the Epistle of Barnabas was no longer considered as the source for the Way of Life section of the Didache, this had the effect of giving new impetus to the question of which, if any, of the known Gospels were used by the framers of the Didache. It is telling that, in 1958, Audet devoted forty-two pages to the Barnabas-dependence issue25 and only twenty pages to the Gospel-dependence issue.26 Audet tried to show that, when the mind is set free of the presumed late dating (120+), then the parallel texts can be set side by side and some fair estimate can be made regarding a possible dependence on the basis of literary analysis and not on the basis of dating.27 When examined closely, Audet concluded that even the so-called "evangelical addition" of Did. 1:3b-5 cannot be explained as coming either from Matthew or from Luke and, given "the approximate date when the interpolator made these additions to the Didache, it is not even permitted to imagine a textual mixture coming from two Synoptics."28 Thus, Audet himself was mildly biased in favor of removing the Gospels themselves as obstacles to the early dating of the Didache. Audet's enduring accomplishment was to demonstrate that the Didache can be best understood when it is interpreted within a Jewish horizon of understanding more or less independent of what one finds in the Gospels. Accordingly, in the end, Audet was persuaded that the manifest Jewish character of the Didache pointed to a completion date prior to 70 C.E. in a milieu (Antioch) which did not yet have a written Gospel.29 HOW THE IDENTIFYING OF SOURCES IS SKEWED BY DATING THE DIDACHE Audet30 and Rordorf31 have wisely noted that the issue of dependence must be settled while bracketing the question of when and where the Didache was composed or else one is drawn into circular reasoning.32 If one supposes an early second century origin for the Didache, for example, then one is naturally disposed to find points where the Didache shows dependence upon one or more known Gospels which were then in circulation. If one supposes a pre-Gospel date of origin, on the other hand, then one is naturally disposed to acknowledge that the framers of the Didache had access to a Jesus tradition which, in part, showed up in the Didache and, only later, showed up in the canonical Gospels. Thus, only after the issue of dependence is settled can a fair estimate be made of its date and place of origin. The issue of Gospel dependence also has a strong bearing upon how one interprets the text. If one supposes, for example, that the Didache made use of Matthew's Gospel, then one could or should make use of Matthew's theology and church practice in order to clarify the intent and background of the Didache. On the other hand, if one supposes that the Didache is independent of Matthew, then it would be an unwarranted projection to expect that the Gospel of Matthew could be used to understand a text created outside of its influence. THE QUESTIONABLE USE OF PARALLEL TEXTS The older methodology consisted in isolating parallel citations and then drawing conclusions based upon an analysis of the degree of coincidence between the texts. Court33, for example, provides the following table of parallel citations:

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Didache Matthew

1:2 22:37ff & 7:12 Two commandments and golden Rule

1:3 5:44ff Pray for your enemies

1:4 5:39ff Turning the other cheek, etc.

1:5 5:26 The last farthing

2:1f 19:18f Commandments

2:3 5:33 Commandments

3:7 5:5 The meek shall inherit the earth

5:1 15:19 List of vices

6:1 24:4 See no one leads you astray

7:1, 3 28:19 Baptismal formula

8:1 6:16 Fasting contrary to hypocrites

8:2 6:5 Prayer contrary to hypocrites

8:2 6:9-13 Lord's Prayer

9:5 7:6 Do not give what is holy to the dogs

10:5 24:31 From the four winds

10:6 21:9, 15 Hosanna

etc. etc. (15 additional entries omitted) After briefly noting the degree of coincidence between the parallels, Court arrived at a sweeping conclusion: With such weight of evidence, where this particular gospel is cited as a distinctive

authority, there can be little doubt that the Didache stands in the tradition of St. Matthew's Gospel.34

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This, of course, is begging the question. The list of parallels makes it appear that Matthew is being cited, but, in effect, other explanations are also possible which preclude any reliance upon a written Gospel. The following points will make this clear: 1. Cases of Exact Verbal Agreement -- Court presupposes that exact verbal agreement allows one to safely conclude that the Didache is citing Matthew, or, to be more exact, the distinctive material which Matthew adds to Mark's Gospel.35 The gathering of the elect "from the four winds" (Did. 10:6 and Matt 24:31), for example, exhibits exact verbal agreement in both documents. In this case, however, Court does not seem interested in knowing whether "from the four winds" is unique to Matthew or whether, in contrast, it was an expression so common that unrelated authors would have been prone to use it. Another case of exact verbal agreement is the saying of the Lord, "Do not give what is holy to dogs" (Did. 9:5 and Matt 7:6). Here again, Court moves uncritically from verbal agreement to the conclusion of dependence. In contrast, a committee of Oxford theologians noted as early as 1905 the problem with uncritically concluding that Did. 9:5 cites Matt 7:6: The verbal resemblance [with Matt 7:6] is exact, but the passage in Matthew contains no

reference to the eucharist, and the proverbial character of the saying reduces the weight which must be attached to verbal similarity.36

In support of its proverbial character, one can note that the saying, "Do not give what is holy to dogs," shows up in the Gospel of Thomas 93 and in the sayings of Basilides (Epiphanius Panarion 24.5.2). Even when the exact origin of this saying cannot be determined, Court is mistaken when he does not allow that proverbs associated with the Lord can be freely cited without reference to Matthew as "the source."37 Nonetheless, Court is not alone in judging that Did. 9:5 indicates dependence upon Matthew.38 2. Cases of Variant Sayings -- In most cases, exact verbal agreement is not found. If Matthew was the source for the Didache, therefore, the framers of the Didache clearly elected to alter their source. Court takes note, for example, that "the Golden Rule occurs in its negative form in Didache, and positive in Matthew,"39 yet he gives no special relevance to this alteration.40 Jefford, in contrast, highlights the relevance of these two variations: The Golden Rule saying is found commonly throughout both Jewish and Hellenistic

sources. The rare occurrence of the saying in its positive form in the Matthean and Lucan Gospels, however, argues that the redactors of those texts are dependent upon a common source, which is most likely the Sayings Gospel of Q. The Didache, on the other hand, reveals the negative form of the saying, which is a form that is predominant throughout the tradition of the Golden Rule [Tobit 4:15; Ep. Arist. 15:5; Irenaeus, Heresies 3.12.14; Clement, Stromateis 2:23; b. Shabbat 31a]. Though there is the possibility that the Didachist is dependent upon the Q tradition as it is reflected in the Synoptics and that s/he consciously has chosen to change the format into one that is negative, this hardly seems likely. Instead it would appear that the Didachist is dependent upon a form that was distinct from the form which was derived from the Sayings Gospel Q.41

Furthermore, the negative formulation of the Golden Rule harmonizes well with the linguistic preference within the Didache for the weightier negative prohibitions: for example, in the decalogue (Did. 2:2) and its extensions (Did. 2:3-6) which concludes with "You will not take an evil plan against your neighbor" (Did. 2:6b)--a negative form of the Golden Rule. In conclusion, therefore, it can be seen that scholars such as

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Court were so intent upon finding parallel citations that demonstrated dependence that they only gave superficial attention to what might have been viewed as "significant differences" in content and style. Vokes tried to save the day by arguing that the framers of the Didache deliberately altered Matt 7:12 to "conceal the borrowing."42 This surmise on the part of Vokes, however, failed to gain a consensus for (a) no systematic program of concealment has been demonstrated and (b) no adequate motive has been put forward to account for this concealment. Vokes, moreover, gave little weight to the widespread existence of the negative Golden Rule outside of Matthew's Gospel. Thus, the simpler explanation is that the framers of the Didache were accustomed to hearing the negative form of the Golden Rule and had no need to alter or conceal what they read in Matthew. 3. Case of the Lord's Prayer -- Even when extended passages show a remarkable similarity, caution must be used. Court, for example, placed great reliance on "the Lord's prayer, where Matthew and the Didache (apart from the doxology) are very closely parallel, while Luke's version is radically different."43 Court, in this instance, presupposed that, based upon form, Luke can be safely eliminated as the source. The close agreement between the Lord's Prayer in Matthew and the Didache thus lead Court to feel entirely justified in concluding that one here strong evidence of textual dependence upon Matthew's Gospel alone. When dealing with oft-repeated prayers, however, one might expect that the framers of the Didache did not borrow from Matthew but made use of the concrete prayer tradition within their own communities as source. But even here, small variations can be significant. Audet, noting the three small variations and the doxology distinguish the form of the Lord's Prayer found in the Didache from that found in Matthew, appropriately reflected on the import of these variations: If the Didachist had borrowed from Matthew, is it reasonable to assume that he would

wish to modify it? . . . and touching upon details, in themselves, so insignificant! According to this hypothesis, he would have gone contrary to received practice, and contrary to the most tenacious practice, [namely] liturgical practice. But for what end? A change which had touched a depth might well be understandable. But a purely formal alteration? In fact, one cannot regard the variations in the Lord's Prayer of the Didache as intentional modifications of the Lord's Prayer of Matthew without consigning the author of the Didache to the artificial and without placing him in contradiction with himself. . . . One returns, therefore, to our point of departure--the variations offered by the Lord's Prayer of the Didache constitute, even by their gratuity, a precious clue to its independence with regard to Matthew.44

Thus, in the end, the strong verbal parallelism in the form of the Lord's Prayer fails to support the dependence which scholars such as Court were anxious to demonstrate. The truth is in the details. A community which put forward variant details of small significance (as Audet rightly notes) must have relied upon its own unique practice and not have gone about copying and slightly modifying the text of Matthew--even supposing that such a text was already in existence and available for use. THE SEDUCTIVE INFLUENCE OF VERBAL AGREEMENT Christopher M. Tuckett aptly testifies to a newer and more discerning methodology which corrects the errors of scholars such as Court. As such, Tuckett cautioned against concluding that verbal parallelism points to textual dependence since, in most cases, alternate explanations are available:

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The measure of verbal agreement between the Didache and Matthew cannot be used to determine whether that agreement is due to direct dependence of one on the other or to common dependence on a prior source [e.g., daily prayers]. Common dependence on a prior source does not necessarily involve less close verbal agreement.45

Clayton N. Jefford, working independent of Tuckett, produced a book-length inquiry into the source problem of the Didache. Jefford shared Tuckett's methodology insofar as, again and again, he acknowledged that one cannot easily distinguish between direct dependence and reliance upon a common source. For example, he writes: In most cases the relationship between the sayings collection in the Didache and the

collection in the Matthew [sic] Gospel is best explained by the hypothesis that the Didachist and the Matthean redactor have shared a common sayings source.46

Jefford, however, was quite uneven in applying this principle. When it came to the Lord's Prayer, for example, Jefford began by acknowledging that it was impossible to specify the source for the Lord's Prayer in the Didache; yet, he then promptly abandoned this position, and concluded that "the literary structure of the piece reflects that of the Matthean Gospel to such an extent that one probably need go no further than the composition of the Matthean text for the source of the Didache's reading."47 Such a conclusion ignores the rule that close verbal agreement does not necessarily indicate textual dependence, since it is possible to explain this agreement "by the hypothesis that the Didachist and the Matthean redactor have shared a common sayings source" (cited above). Moreover, Jefford, like Court before him, never seriously entertained the possibility that a prayer recited three times each day might constitute an "oral source" and that the multiple deviations from Matthew's text must signify, minimally, that the framers of the Didache were not citing from an open Gospel set out before him. This will be returned to momentarily. Close verbal agreement will always be incapable of establishing dependence for yet another reason. Consider, for a moment, the fact that there are three instances wherein Justin Martyr, writing in the mid-second century, offers Jesus sayings in closer verbal agreement with the Didache than any of the Synoptic parallels.48 Even given these three instances, it is telling that no one today returns to the abandoned position whereby the Didache was conjectured to have been written using Justin Martyr as a source. Nor, for that matter, does any contemporary scholar, save for Smith49, conclude that Justin Martyr wrote with the Didache open before him as his source. The reason for this, as Paul Achtemeier explains, is that ancient writers did not, even when they were citing known and available sources, bother to open them, find the place, and copy them word for word: In such written texts [where they existed], the location of a given passage would be

extraordinarily difficult: aside from the need to roll and re-roll, there would be no visible indication of where various parts of the composition began or ended. Nor would there be a way, once the passage was located, of referring to it by paragraph or page so that others could also find it. . . . Authors did not "check references" in the way modern scholars do (or ought to do!). In light of the pervasive orality of the environment, and the physical nature of written documents, references were much more likely to be quoted from memory than to be copied from a source.50

In the case of Justin Martyr, consequently, one should not be surprised to find variations present no matter whether he is citing the Jewish prophets or culling sayings of Jesus from what he repeatedly identifies as the "memoirs of the apostles."51 Furthermore, in those instances when Justin Martyr has variations which strikingly agree with the Didache, this agreement was not necessarily due to his having

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read or heard the Didache; rather, this could be satisfactorily explained by noting his highly developed ability demonstrated throughout his writing for recalling from memory and reproducing sayings and narratives without clearly referencing when and where he came upon them. When examined in detail, Helmut Koester thus concluded that Justin Martyr habitually paraphrased his "sources," often harmonizing elements from both Matthew and Luke, and even added narrative details and complete sayings of Jesus which find no clear parallel in any written source known to us.52 In effect, therefore, Justin Martyr wrote and spoke like many ministers and religious folk today who fill their speaking with biblical verses and allusions taken from memory. Their memory, needless to say, seems quite secure to them even while they are all the time paraphrasing, omitting unimportant elements, substituting familiar for unfamiliar words. From time to time, they even create new material, as in the case when I heard a preacher who spoke of Jesus as saying, "Money is the root of all evil." The upshot of this discussion is that no degree of verbal similarity can, in and of itself, be used to conclude that the framers of the Didache knew and/or cited the written Gospel. In every case, it is quite possible that both Matthew and the framers of the Didache relied upon free-floating sayings which they both incorporated into their material in different ways. DIVERGENT NORMS SUPPORTED BY APPEALS TO THE LORD If the degree of verbal agreement cannot be used to definitively decide the issue of dependency, then other factors must be taken into account. One such method would be to examine areas of common concern shared by the Didache and the Gospel of Matthew and to determine how the rhetoric and logic of one corresponds to or diverges from that of the other. Seven such cases will be considered: 1. The Didache puts forward "Do not give what is holy to dogs" (9:5) as a "saying of the Lord" which authoritatively supports the exclusion of the non-baptized from the eucharistic meal of the community. The parallel saying in Matt 7:6 is preceded by a warning against hypocrites and followed by a warning against throwing "your pearls before swine." In this case of exact verbal agreement (as noted above), one quickly notes that Matthew's context has nothing to do with either baptism or eucharist. Rather, Matthew, according to Robert Gundry, uses the dual sayings about dogs and pigs to warn "against easy conditions of entrance into the church" which produce conditions wherein disciples "turn against other disciples in times of persecution."53 "Dogs" and "pigs" are the only important words unaccounted for. But these stem from

the typically Jewish vocabulary of derogation. Jewish-minded Matthew finds it easy to use them. In fact, he probably draws the figure of dogs from Ps 22:17(16), where it stands for those among God's people who turn on the righteous in persecution--exactly the implication here (cf. Phil 3:2, Rv 22:15). The figure of dogs naturally leads to that of pigs for the sake of parallelism. . . . Not only did Jews abhor pigs (cf. Lev 11:7, Luke 15:15-16), but also dogs were generally detested. They roamed the streets scavenging for food. . . .54

The Didache, in contrast, knows only of the saying regarding "dogs" (Did. 9:5). The force of the saying can be gathered from its context: only those baptized may "eat or drink from your eucharist" (Did. 9:5). In the Didache, the eucharistic food was considered as "a sacrifice" (Did. 14:1, 2); hence, within a Jewish context, it was "holy" (Exod 29:33-34; Lev 2:3, 22:10-16; Num 18:8-19). The saying thus has the sense of warning that the meats offered in the temple sacrifices were not to be consumed by gentiles. The late rabbinic tradition used this saying with exactly this purpose: "What is holy is not to be released to be eaten by dogs" (b. Bekhorot 15a cited in TDNT 3:1102). The Didache, consequently, would

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appear to embrace the original application of this saying to temple sacrifices and to apply it to the "sacrifice" newly recognized by the Didache communities.55 In brief, one has here a saying which portrays exact verbal correspondence but which, when interpreted in two different contexts, evokes meanings which are markedly divergent. It would be improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of or in any way dependent upon Matthew's Gospel in the use of this saying. Furthermore, since this saying was available as a saying of the Lord-God within segments of the Jewish tradition as well as within sayings collections attributed to Jesus (Gosp. Thom. 93), it would be difficult to maintain that Matthew's Gospel was the unique source, especially since Matthew deflects the meaning of the saying in a direction devoid of sacrificial overtones. 2. Did 8:1 specifies that one should not fast "with the hypocrites"; hence, two alternate days of community fast are prescribed. Did 8:2 goes on to say that one should not pray "as the hypocrites" but to use the Lord's Prayer three times each day. Matthew, in contrast, prohibits praying "like the hypocrites" (6:5) who stand "that they might be seen by men." The solution, in Matthew's context, is not to change the prayer formula but to "go into your room and shut the door" (6:6). Likewise, in the case of fasting, "the hypocrites . . . disfigure their faces" (6:16). Matthew would have the followers of Jesus "anoint you head and wash your face" (6:17) thereby disguising their fast from public view. The Didache, in contrast, appears to presume a common mode of mode of fasting with the "hypocrites"; yet, since fasting together signals public solidarity in the reasons for fasting, the days of fasting are altered. In brief, the functional descriptions of "hypocrites" surrounding fasting and praying and the corrective responses of the community found in Matthew appear to be entirely distinct from what is found in the Didache. It would appear that the common term "hypocrites" serves to describe two different classes of people who are to be responded to by two different strategies in two distinct communities.56 Furthermore, the Didache appears to know nothing of the Jesus sayings in Matthew and, accordingly, designs altered norms with complete indifference to Matthew's. It would be highly improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of or in any way dependent upon Matthew's Gospel in defining or resolving issues related to fasting and praying. 3. Both the Didache and Matthew had to deal with backsliders and with misbehaving members. To accomplish this, the Didache prescribes confessing personal transgressions before the weekly eucharist (Did. 14:1) and the shunning of members unwilling to amend their lives (Did. 15:3). For the former, the Didache cites Mal 11:1 in support--implying that the framers of the Didache knew of no saying of Jesus nor any mandate from tradition that could be used in order to support such a practice.57 Matthew's Gospel, meanwhile, endorses quite a different procedure. The injured party takes the initiative to resolve a grievance in three well-defined stages: first, privately, then with the help of a few witnesses, and finally with the force of the entire community (Matt 18:15-18). At each stage, the misbehaving member is invited to acknowledge his/her failing and make amends. Only the one who persistently refuses ends up being shunned. In Matthew's community, this procedure is seemingly normative, since Jesus is heard to endorse it in his own words. Had the framers of the Didache known of this saying of Jesus (either by reading Matthew's Gospel or experiencing Matthew's community), it would be difficulty to understand why they would not have made use of it. As it is, they had to stretch and strain Mal 11:1 to support the seemingly novel practice of using the eucharist as a gate for reconciliation: "Everyone having a conflict with his companion, do not let him come together with you [for the eucharist] until they be reconciled, in order that your sacrifice not be defiled" (Did 14:2). Alternately, instead of cited Mal 11:1 to support this practice, it could be argued that the framers of the Didache could have made easy use of Matt 5:23 due to its ready-made juxtapositioning of reconcilliation and sacrifice.58 But they didn't! It would be highly improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of

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or in any way informed by Matthew's Gospel when it came time to justify using the eucharist as a guarantee of reconciliation. 4. The Didache includes a decalogue (Did. 2:2) adapted for gentiles along with a system of "fences" (Did. 3) that give attention to forestalling minor infractions that might provide the slippery slope toward major infractions. Matthew, on the other hand, approaches the insufficiency of the decalogue by developing a series of antitheses which are filled with hyperbolic language.59 In the Didache, the system of "fences" is used to securely train gentiles. In Matthew, the series of antitheses are designed to insure that "the righteousness" of Jesus' disciples "exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees" (Matt 5:20). Thus, one has two diverse religious systems appended to the decalogue--each designed in response to diverse existential needs. Neither system appears aware of the other.60 If the Didache had existed in a community which used Matthew's Gospel (as some suppose), one would have expected that there would have been some cross-fertilization of methods. It would be highly improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of or in any way dependent upon Matthew's Gospel. 5. Did. 6:2 uses "yoke of the Lord [God]" in a way which harmonizes with Jewish tradition (e.g., Sir 51:25, m. Berakoth 2:2, b. Sotah 47b) and makes no use of Matthew having Jesus say, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me" (11:29). 6. Did. 6:3 reflects an aversion toward "the meat offered to idols" which finds no exact parallel in either Acts (10:14, 28; 11:3) or Paul (1 Cor 10:23-33, Rom 14:1-23). Meanwhile, the Didache appears to be unaware that "it is not what goes in the mouth that defiles a person" (Matt 15:10). It would be highly improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of or in any way dependent upon Matthew's Gospel. 7. Matthew and the Didache provide two different interpretations of the "unforgivable sin." For Matthew, "whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven" (12:32). Matthew develops this saying which he finds in Mark 3:29 in order to retain Mark's defense of Jesus' power of exorcism against the verbal attacks of Pharisees (Matt 12:24 = Mark 3:22 "scribes"). For the Didache, the unforgivable sin is putting on trial or judging a "prophet speaking in the Spirit" (11:7). While some degree of overlap is present here, clearly the Didache and Matthew have distinct agendas. It would be improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of or in any way dependent upon Matthew's Gospel for the development of their tradition on the unforgivable sin. In brief, as particular texts and issues are examined, one finds the Didache defining and resolving common problems differently than Matthew. When parallel citations are used with strong or exact verbal agreement, the investigations above show that divergent religious systems were at play providing different contexts and meanings for these sayings. Overall, despite some verbal similarities, one is thus forced to conclude that the framers of the Didache operated independently of Matthew's Gospel even when addressing common issues. One could, of course, argue that the framers of the Didache were aware of Matthew's solutions but consciously chose neither to address them nor to make use of them. Such a position would have to supply a sufficient reason for each instance wherein the Didache passed over the Matthean tradition in silence (e.g., as in the case where the confession of failings was upheld on the basis of the obscure Mal 11:1 while Matt 5:23 offers a ready-made support). Since no such reasons are forthcoming, the simpler and more satisfying route is to acknowledge that the framers of the Didache worked out solutions to their problems without any awareness of the practice of Matthew's communities nor of Matthew's Gospel. WHETHER THE DOUBLE LOVE COMMANDMENTS DEMONSTRATE DEPENDENCE

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Tuckett makes the point that each of the love commandments (Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18b) finds ample testimony in Jewish sources but only rarely are they found together and never are they enumerated ("first . . . second . . .") as in Did. 1:2a. As a result, Tuckett jumps to conclude that "the simplest solution is to postulate dependence upon Matthew."61 Here, again, attention must be given to the particulars. The double love commandment in Matthew's Gospel emerges as a response to "a lawyer" who "asked him a question to test him" (Matt 22:35). Jesus recites a close variant on Deut 6:5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37). The Didache, in contrast, puts forward, "You will love the God who made you" (Did. 1:2a). This is an unexpected variation on Deut 6:5, and it serves here to define "the Way of Life" and not to define "the greatest commandment" (Matt 22:36) on which "hangs all the law [Torah] and the prophets" (Matt 22:40). Extending Audet's argument above, one could thus say the following to Tuckett: If the Didachist had borrowed Matt 23:37, is it reasonable to assume that he would wish

to modify it? . . . and touching upon details, in themselves, so seemingly insignificant! According to this hypothesis, he would go contrary to received practice, and contrary to the most tenacious practice, the oral recitation of Deut 6:5 which immediately follows the Shema. But for what end? A change which had touched a depth might well be understandable. But a purely formal alteration? In fact, one cannot regard Did. 1:2a as an intentional modifications of Matt 22:37 without consigning the author of the Didache to the artificial and without placing him in contradiction with himself. . . . One returns, therefore, to our point of departure--the variations offered in Did. 1:2 constitute, even by their gratuity, a precious clue to its independence with regards to Matthew.62

In sum, if the Didache communities put forward variant details of small significance, they must have relied upon their own stubborn oral traditions and not gone to the trouble of consulting and deliberately modifying what Jesus "said" according to the Gospel of Matthew--even supposing that such a manuscript was already in existence and available at hand. Oral tradition, is more stubborn to change and more authoritative within an oral culture than is commonly supposed.63 Even today, we ourselves tend to mentally correct church lectors whenever they mis-read phrases from the Sunday portion of the bible or whenever they use an English translation unfamiliar to our ears. With even greater force, the Didache's formulation of Did. 1:2a must have been quite deliberate and stood within a solidly received tradition for it to withstand being harmonized with Deut 6:5 or with Matt 23:37. It would be highly improbable, therefore, that the framers of the Didache were aware of or in any way dependent upon Matthew's Gospel in defining the Way of Life. WHETHER "TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK" DEMONSTRATES DEPENDENCE Nearly all the major commentators have come to the conclusion that the Two Ways existed as a Jewish catechetical document for gentiles which was superficially "Christianized" by the addition of Jesus sayings (Did. 1:3b-5a). Audet gave concrete expression to this hypothesis in his massive 700 page commentary on the Didache published in 1958. Audet brought to his commentary his rich familiarity with Jewish sources and, nearly at every point within the text, Audet discovered Jewish parallels. Audet identified the Two Ways (Did. 1-5) accordingly as "belonging to the genre of an `instruction on the commandments' . . . as it was being practiced by the contemporary synagogue."64 Rordorf, twenty years later, regarded the first five chapters of the Didache as "essentially Jewish, but the Christian community was able to use it as such"65 with the addition of the "Evangelical section" (Did. 1:3b-5a). Nearly twenty years after him, John S. Kloppenborg even goes so far as to affirm that "in the final form of

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the Didache, of course, the presence of sayings of Jesus which the reader presumably is intended to recognize as such, amounts to a `Christianization' of the document."66 The very act of recognizing "sayings of Jesus" has been prejudiced by the judgment that they are to be found in the Synoptic Gospels. Moreover, only gradually has there been a willingness to allow that sayings attributed to Jesus circulated orally outside the Synoptics and that these sayings showed up in written materials (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas) both before and after the creation of the Synoptics.67 The Didache, consequently, may contain a much larger section of Jesus sayings than is commonly admitted and even the so-called "Evangelical section"68 of the Way of Life may owe it existence to this oral tradition circulating independent of written sources. Leaving this aside for the moment, let us proceed with a standard evaluation of the so-called "Evangelical section" of the Didache. In order to make this study more manageable, only Did. 1:4-5a will be considered and the careful textual study of Tuckett will be relied upon. Tuckett's analysis needs to be carefully considered because it demonstrates that a cautious critical analysis of the parallel texts can result in the conclusion that the Didache depended upon both Matthew and Luke for its composition. Tuckett's study, moreover, has been received by Rordorf as offering "the most careful and comprehensive study of the problem that I know [after Koester]."69 To begin with, Tuckett examines the parallel texts in Greek. These parallel texts are reproduced here in English translation. Care has been taken to modify the NRSV translation where necessary to correspond to the Didache translation where exact Greek equivalence exists. To make this passages visually apparent, they are displayed in bold-face type.

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Matthew 5:38-42 Didache 1:4-5a

"You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. [A] But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him/her also the other; [B] and if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, give (dos) also your cloak; [C] and if anyone presses you into service one mile, go with him/her two. [D] Give (didou) to everyone asking you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

Abstain from fleshly and bodily desires. [How so?] [A] if anyone should give you a strike on the right cheek, turn to him/her also the other, and you will be perfect; [B] if anyone should press you into service for one mile, go with him/her two; [C] if anyone should take away your cloak, give (aphes) to him/her also your tunic; [D] if anyone should take from you [what is] yours, do not ask for it back; for you are not even able [to do so]. To everyone asking you [for anything], give (dos) and do not ask for it back; for, to all, the Father wishes to give [these things] from his own free gifts.

When Matthew and the Didache are compared in the table above, one notices that each has four sayings (A to D) but that they are used by each author to illustrate significantly different topics. For purposes of brevity, I will point out some of the observations of Tuckett and then proceed to examine his conclusion, namely, "that this section of the Didache appears on a number of occasions to presuppose the redactional activity of both evangelists, perhaps Luke more clearly than Matthew."70 The evidence will be reviewed, beginning with Matthew. Tuckett spots evidence suggesting dependence upon Matthew. The two most evident instances suggesting such dependence are as follows: Did. 1:4 [A] agrees very closely with the Matthean form of the saying specifying the

"right" cheek, using didonai rapisma ["give a strike"] . . . , and strepson ["turn"]. . . .71

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Did. 1:4b [B] is parallel to Matt 5:41 [C], which has no Lukan parallel.72 Thus, in the first instance, the Didache has "right" cheek whereas Luke fails to specify which cheek. The Greek terms are also closer to Matthew than to Luke. In the second instance, the situation of being pressed to go one mile is placed in a different order in Matthew but is entirely absent from Luke. Tuckett, however, does not want to give excessive weight to the absence of this saying in Luke because it is just possible that Luke found this in Q but, for reasons unknown to us, omitted it.73

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Luke 6:27-32 Didache 1:4-5

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. [A] If anyone strikes you on (epi) the cheek , offer also the other; [B] and from anyone who takes away your cloak do not withhold also your tunic. [C] To everyone asking you [for anything], give ; [D] and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for it back; Do to others as you would have them do to you. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

Abstain from fleshly and bodily desires. [How so?] [A] if anyone should give you a strike on (eis) the right cheek , turn to him/her also the other, and you will be perfect; [B] if anyone should press you into service for one mile, go with him/her two; [C] if anyone should take away your cloak, give to him/her also your tunic; [D] if anyone should take from you [what is] yours, do not ask for it back; for you are not even able [to do so]. To everyone asking you [for anything], give and do not ask for it back; for, to all, the Father wishes to give [these things] from his own free gifts.

Tuckett also finds evidence suggesting that the framers of the Didache depended upon Luke's version. The two most evident instances are as follows: The Didache here [C] reveals close affinities with the Lukan version. . . . Matthew's

version presupposes the situation of a lawsuit where the person addressed where the

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person addressed is being sued for his shirt (chitôn) ["tunic"] and is told to surrender even his cloak (himation). . . . Luke's (and the Didache's) version reverses the order of the chitôn and the himation and seems to presuppose a robbery situation: if a person is robed of his cloak (the first thing a robber would grab) he is to surrender his shirt [tunic] as well.74

The Didache [D] agrees with Luke against Matthew in referring to someone who

takes, rather than someone who wants to borrow; there is also agreement between the Didache and Luke in using apaitei ["ask back"] in the final part.75

The upshot of Tuckett's investigation is that the "Didache appears on a number of occasions to presuppose the redactional activity of both evangelists."76 Tuckett is firm on this point: The evidence of the Didache seems to show that the text is primarily a witness to the

post-redactional history of the synoptic tradition. It is not a witness to any pre-redactional developments.77

THE BIAS OF TEXTUALITY AND THE IGNORANCE OF ORALITY Willy Rordorf attempted to analyze and refute Tuckett's conclusions regarding the "Evangelical section" while sharing his methodology. His results are less than convincing. Rordorf's key argument appears to be that "with a canonical text [such as Matthew and Luke] it is impossible to chop and change [it] as the Didache does."78 To this, Tuckett might well respond that it would be anachronistic to speak of "a canonical text" in the first two centuries. Moreover, not only do Matthew and Luke demonstrate the freedom to chop and change the material received from Mark, but the same can be said for the early Church Fathers citing them. In the mid-second century writings of Justin Martyr, for example, "the vast majority of the sayings in Justin's writings are harmonizations of the texts of Matthew and Luke."79 In my judgment, Tuckett's conclusions cannot be effectively refuted unless one calls into question the bias of textuality and the ignorance of orality which marks his methodology. This might proceed as follows: 1. The Bias of Textuality -- Tuckett entirely frames his inquiry around which "source" or "sources" the Didache used. Since we live in a post-Guttenberg era, Tuckett is naturally disposed to think of ancient authors gravitating toward written sources. Thus, it is only natural that affinities with Matthew on some points vie with affinities with Luke on still other points, and, in the end, this quandary can only be settled by presupposing that the framers of the Didache knew both Gospels. Tuckett never takes into account the possibility that the Didache was created in "a culture of high residual orality"80 wherein "oral sources" (attached to respected persons) were routinely given greater weight and were immeasurably more serviceable than "written sources".81 Moreover, Tuckett does not seem to allow that "oral sources" had a certain measure of socially maintained stability but not the frozen rigidity of a written text.82 As such, Tuckett's methodology suffers from "the bias of textuality and the ignorance of orality": The form-critical search for the archetypal composition, and the compulsion to honor it

as a first rung in the evolutionary ladder betray the bias of textuality and ignorance of oral behavior. The works of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord have made it incontrovertibly plain that each oral performance is an irreducible unique creation. If, for example, Jesus spoke a saying more than once, the first utterance did not produce

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"the original," nor was the second one a "variant" thereof, because each moment of speech is wondrously fresh and new [since it is adapted to each different audience]. The concepts of original form and variants have no validity in oral life, nor does the one of ipsissima vox, if by that one means the authentic version over and against secondary ones. "In a sense each performance is `an' original, if not `the' original."83

2. The Didache As an Oral Production -- When the residual clues of orality84 are again noted in the Didache , it becomes possible to understand that its oral creation and oral recitation marked it's internal structure long before it was ever a written text. The Didache , once it was first written down, would normally have been created as a scribal transcription listening to an oral production being recited by someone who had mastered it.85 Those who received or used this written manuscript would have, in their turn, instinctively read it aloud even when alone, for it was in hearing it that it was recognized for what it was.86 The text itself, lacking capitals, lacking paragraph indentations, lacking even spaces between words, had to be heard to be recognized. The creation of the Didache , therefore, never took place as a composite of written sources which the author produced in a study surrounded by source documents. It would be anachronistic, consequently, to imagine that the Didache was composed with the books of Matthew and Luke open. Jefford soberly reminds us: "All the quotations in the Didache are clearly made from memory."87 When the clues discovered in the vocabulary and the linguistic structure of the Didache are carefully examined, they speak out in favor of an oral performance. Thus, the literary world of seeing, reading, writing, and editing must not be given first place.88 The most apt assessment would be that the Didache was created, transmitted, interpreted, and transformed in "a culture of high residual orality which nevertheless communicated significantly by means of literary creations."89 3. The Transmission of a Jesus Tradition -- The formation of the Didache drew upon oral sources which were wedded together by virtue of reflecting what was already being heard and practiced within the Didache communities. The Way of Life, since the Didache attributes it to the Father revealing (i.e., speaking) through his servant Jesus (Did. 9:3, 10:2), must have had the community-approved resonance as being what the God of Israel required of gentiles in the last days. Even the Synoptic Gospels make it clear that Jesus himself did not train his own disciples using some progression of sayings which they repeated in unison after him. Rather, they signal that he apprenticed them in a way of life which enabled them to do what he did, to value what he valued, to expect what he hoped for.90 The Way of Life, accordingly, exhibits a carefully crafted progression91 of heuristic sayings that were received as authoritative because it was used by community-recognized teachers/mentors to initiate gentiles into habits of mind and ways of living required of them in preparation for their final inclusion in the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus. It seems mistaken, consequently, to imagine that the Way of Life required "Jesus sayings" to lend it authority and that these sayings were largely limited to the so-called "Evangelical section." Rather, the whole of the Way of Life would have been understood as reflecting the values lived and taught by Jesus and his apostles. Only a misplaced bias of textuality and a blurring of the Jewishness of Jesus would allow someone to imagine that the authority of Jesus somehow dissipates as soon as community-approved teachers/mentors are not repeating the historically verified sayings of Jesus.92 4. The Term "Gospel" Used by the Didache -- When the Didache itself uses the term euagellion ("gospel"), it refers, first and foremost, to the "good news of God" preached by Jesus.93 One has to wait until the mid-second century before the term "gospel" takes on the extended meaning of referring to written texts.94 Tuckett, to his credit, appears to be aware of this because, unlike many other scholars, he never makes the mistake of imagining that the four references to euagellion (8:2; 11:3; 15:3, 4) within the Didache provide evidence for the existence of an authoritative written "gospel" used within the community.

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5. Why So Much Passed Over in Silence? -- If the Gospel of Thomas and a written copy of Q existed during the formative period of the Didache , there is no evidence that the framers of the Didache relied upon either. Had they done so, it would have been difficult to understand why such a minuscule portion of the Jesus wisdom found therein was taken over into the Didache itself. When it comes to the written Gospels of Matthew and Luke, this same argument could be extended. Let us presume, for the moment, that the framers of the Didache did have and did acknowledge a Jesus tradition in a written Gospel of Matthew. How then might one explain, why so much of the material in Matthew is passed over in complete silence--especially considering the fact that the framers of the Didache were treating common topics such as fasting, praying, almsgiving, reconciling, shunning, examining prophets? Put differently: If the framers of the Didache did borrow from Matt 5:38-42, then why did they not borrow materials either before or after their slim borrowings? Many scholars surmise, as explained above, that Did. 1:3-5a was introduced into the Didache at some late point when the Gospel of Matthew became available. If this were the case, then it remains puzzling why this and only this small portion of the Sermon on the Mount was borrowed? It remains doubly puzzling why the borrower, presuming (mistakingly as some do) that he wanted to give the Didache a decided push in the direction of being "from Jesus," didn't take the time and the effort to more closely reproduce the order and wording those accustomed to hearing Matthew's Gospel would have found familiar. Vokes, at least, honestly deals with this issue by suggesting that the Didache wished to disguise this borrowing but then, as explained above, he does nothing by way of explaining what purpose95 would be served by this subterfuge. Finally, even if some sense could be made of why so little of the Sermon on the Mount was borrowed and why its form was so severely edited, it would still remain puzzling why the borrower would then go on to append an editorial expansion of such length (78 words). To my knowledge, neither Tuckett nor those who share his methodology ever seem interested in either asking or answering such questions. From the vantage point of an oral environment, however, simple answers are forthcoming: The framers of the Didache did not have to make a slim selection from the wealth of Jesus material in the Sermon on the Mount because they were entirely unfamiliar with Matthew's written Gospel--and any other Gospel which has come down to us as well. In a milieu strongly wedded to oral traditions, the framers of the Didache undoubtedly embraced Did. 1:3-5 as part of the Jesus tradition which responded to an urgent set of needs felt by gentiles who presented themselves for membership. Matthew and Luke, each in their turn, were familiar with and adapted the saying in the Q Gospel in response to the social needs of their own readers. Each wrote independent of the other. Matthew knew nothing of Luke. The Didache knew nothing of either. The strongest positive evidence is that each author molds detached sayings to speak to a different need(s) set within a different context. The strongest negative evidence is that none of the three documents demonstrate any awareness of the context wherein the parallel sayings show up in the others and, especially in the case of the Didache , common problems are addressed in complete ignorance of the others. This latter point would suggest that the Didache was created in an environment where the text of the Gospel of Matthew was either unknown or, if known, disregarded. Given the diversity of defining and responding to pastoral issues, one must further conclude that even the formational influence of the Gospel of Matthew upon the community practice of the Didache is not evident. All in all, as the rhetoric, logic, and implied praxis is investigated, both Matthew and the Didache appear more and more to be working out of two divergent religious systems which have only a small degree of shared turf. ESCHATOLOGICAL DIVERGENCE: THE SPECIAL CASE OF DIDACHE 16 The final chapter of the Didache offers an eschatological scenario which forms a complete unit. As a result, scholars have been keen to identify the source of this unit. The dominant view has been

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that Did. 16 depends on Matthew 24.96 When the elements of Didache 16 are set side by side with possible "source" material in Matt 24, the results are impressive97:

Didache Matthew

16:3 24:11-12 (7:15)

16:4a 24:12 & 10

16:4b 24:24

16:4d 24:21

16:5b 24:10

16:5c 24:13 (10:22b)

16:6a 24:30a

16:6b 24:31

16:7 25:31

16:8 24:30b (26:64)

Upon closer examination, however, none of the key expressions found in Matt 24 get carried over into the Didache . Matthew prefers "end of the age" or "completion of the eon" (synteleias tou aiônos) whereas the Didache uses only "in the last time" (en tô eschatô kairô) and "in the last days" (en tais eschatais êmerais). Nowhere in Matthew's Gospel does one find either of these expressions used by the framers of the Didache . If the framers of the Didache made use of Matt 24, then one finds difficulty in explaining why so little of Matthew was carried over into the Didache . Matthew, and Mark before him, show great interest in "false messiahs" (Matt 24:5, 23, 24 and par.) who will endeavor to lead the faithful astray. Matthew also refers to international wars, famines, earthquakes which some will misinterpret as "the end" (Matt 24:3). Matthew's community, however, awaits the proclamation of the good news "throughout the world" as the "sign" of when "the end will come" (Matt 24:14). Then, "the desolating sacrilege . . . spoken of by the prophet Daniel" (Matt 24:15; Dan 9:27, 11:31, 12:11) will necessitate flight at a moment's notice and will result in great suffering. Then, "after the suffering" the sun, moon, and stars will "fall from heaven" (Matt 24:29). Then "the sign of the Son of Man" will appear ushering in the final judgment and the ingathering of the elect (Matt 24:31-32). None of these things are carried over into the Didache . It must be asked, therefore, what sense it makes to imagine that Matt 24 was the source which the framers of the Didache elected to almost entirely ignore. Even in those instances where there is close verbal agreement, the logic and order of the Didache is openly in conflict with what one finds in Matt 24. Take, for instance, the "coming on the clouds" and the "trumpet call"--areas where there is close verbal agreement and no parallels in Mark 13.

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Butler speaks of Did. 16:6-8 as "practically a copy of Matt 24:30-31, with the omissions and rearrangements necessitated by the Didache's decision to select and enumerate three signs."98 The divergence, however, is much deeper than Butler acknowledges. Consider the following: 1. The "sign" of the Son of Man in Matthew's Gospel (borrowed from Dan 7:13-14) is directed toward alerting his readers as to when and how Jesus will return (Matt 24:3). The emphasis is upon universal "visibility"99--much "as the lightning comes from the east and flashes las far as the west" (Matt 24:28). In contrast, "false messiahs . . . appear and produce signs" locally--in the wilderness or in the inner rooms (Matt 24:23-27). The "signs" in the Didache , on the other hand, are principally the "signs of truth" (Did. 16:6) directed against the deceiving "signs and wonders" (Did. 16:4b) performed by the universally accepted world-deceiver who is received as "a son of God" (Did. 16:4b). The issue, consequently, is not that Matthew has one while the Didache has three signs as Butler implies. Rather, the logic and function of "signs" in each writing are quite distinct. 2. The "coming on the clouds" and the "trumpet call" are reversed in the Didache and for good reasons. According to the Didache , "the burning process of testing" will destroy the wicked and purify "the ones having remained firm in their faith" (Did. 16:5).100 The unfurling banner and trumpet call thus serve to assemble the purified elect and the resurrected saints who, together, form an entourage to welcome the Lord when he comes atop the clouds (Did. 16:8). No further separation or judgment is necessary. According to Matthew, on the other hand, the one coming as the "Son of Man" is the one who "sits on his glorious throne" (Matt 25:31) for the purpose of judging. This is signalled by the phrase: "and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn" (Matt 24:30).101 The angels, therefore, along with the trumpet call come into play at this point for the purpose of gathering the elect on his right hand and, by implication, gathering those to be consigned to "the eternal fire" (Matt 25:41) on his left. Consequently, the ordering of the "coming on the clouds" and the "trumpet call" are distinctly different in Matthew and in the Didache because they hold different views on the resurrection and on the role of the one coming. 3. Following upon this, it is no surprise that Matthew and the Didache diverge respecting the identity and the mood surrounding the one coming. The "Son of Man" anticipated by Matthew, scholars agree,102 is Jesus coming to judge the nations. At this "sign," "all the tribes of the earth will mourn" (Matt 24:30)--and "the context in Matthew favors a mourning of despair."103 In the case of the Didache , it is not Jesus but the Lord-God (as noted in the citation of Did. 16:7) who is anticipated "atop the clouds" (Did. 16:8). This Lord comes to bring the promised kingdom (Did. 8:2, 9:4, 10:5) to his elect who have assembled to meet him. The mood surrounding his coming is therefore triumphal and filled with unmitigated expectation. Here again, therefore, a significant divergence distinguishes the Didache from Matt 24. In the end, therefore, the "omissions and rearrangements" which are attributed to the framers of the Didache go much deeper than just the switch from one sign to three. "Signs" play a different function in the Didache. Events are rearranged because the framers of the Didache hold different expectations as to when judgment will take place and as to who will be raised. Furthermore, the identity of the one coming in the Didache is the Father and not Jesus. Needless to say, this sort of discussion could be extended to examine Did. 16:3-5 as well. If this were done, an even greater list of divergent views would surface which would demonstrate that Matt 24 and Did. 16 are not cut out of the same piece of cloth.

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John Kloppenborg has undertaken a careful investigation of Did. 16:6-8. He observed quite rightly along with Ladd104, Glover105, and Butler106 that the Didache finds parallels to Matthew almost exclusively in those areas where he inserts distinctive traditions not found in Mark: The presence of a disproportionately large amount of material in Did 16:3-8 which has

parallels only in special Matthean material and the corresponding lack of distinctively Marcan material as reproduced by Matthew suggest that Did 16:3-8 drew not upon Matthew but upon a tradition to which Matthew also had access. This tradition must have contained the Vorlage ["prior source"] of Matt 24:10-12 (13?), a quotation from Zach 14:5, an adaptation of Dan 7:13 (using either epi or epanô tôn gephelôn), a reference to a sign appearing in heaven prior to the Parousia, and the mention of a trumpet call. Matthew conflated this source with his Marcan source. . . .107

Kloppenborg should have said in his last line, "Matthew supplemented his Marcan source with this source," for the outline of Mark's eschatology is clearly retained while only smatterings of his source are included. Moreover, Kloppenborg is clearly on soft ground when he guesses at the contents of his special source. Nonetheless, Kloppenborg is on target when he observes that Did. 16:3-8 did not draw upon the Gospel of Matthew: The Didache shows no dependence upon either Mark (or his source) or Matthew, but

rather seems to represent a tradition upon which Matthew drew. Moreover, even a cursory glance at Did. 16:3-8 suggests the same conclusion. Did. 16:3-8 agrees with Matthew only when Matthew is using his special source. Agreements with Mark are registered only when Mark was quoting common and widely known apocalyptic sayings (e.g., Dan 7:12, 12:12).108

EXAMINING AND REFUTING THE POSITION OF TUCKETT Tuckett, who is persuaded that the Didache "presupposes the finished form of the Synoptic Gospels, or at least that of Matthew,"109 faults Kloppenborg's argument on two points: 1. Tuckett's first objection relates to the small measure of verbal agreement between Matt 24 and Did. 16. On this ground alone, Tuckett insists that one cannot draw any firm conclusions as to whether the Didache used Matthew or whether both had a common source: The measure of verbal agreement between the Didache and Matthew cannot be used

to determine whether that agreement is due to direct dependence of one on the other or to common dependence on a prior source. Common dependence on a prior source does not necessarily involve less close verbal agreement.110

While Tuckett is correct in what he says, this does not advance the claim for one side or the other. What is at issue is that the material common to Matthew and Mark is almost entirely absent from the Didache , while the material special to Matt 24 finds partial inclusion. This observation of Tuckett thus misses the point. 2. Tuckett's second objection returns to this very point: If the question is whether the Didache depends upon Matthew's Gospel or on a pre-

Matthean source, one cannot use the evidence of the Didache itself to solve the source

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problem of Matthew's text. Koester's [or Kloppenborg's] argument is thus dangerously circular.111

Here, again, Tuckett's dodges the real issue. The Didache does supply information regarding the availability of certain end-time expectations which are not found in Mark. If they show up in the Didache and in the editorial additions of Matthew, then one can conclude (without being circular), that they both depended upon a "pre-Matthean source." Otherwise, Tuckett would have to explain how and why the framers of the Didache could have had Matthew open before them and artfully avoided (without knowing it) 99% of the material taken over from Mark. This is the argument raised by Kloppenborg, reenforced by Koester and Rordorf, to which Tuckett has not given any adequate reply. Again and again, Tuckett seems determined to show that no common "pre-Matthean source" exists. Matthew, for instance, alters Mark's Son of Man as coming "in (en) the clouds" (Mark 13:26) to read "on (epi) the clouds of heaven" (Matt 26:30). Kloppenborg argues that this seemingly small alteration serves "to make it clear that the clouds were the medium of movement and not merely the backdrop of the scene."112 Kloppenborg also notes that this suggestion of causality is implied in the Didache's "atop (epano) the clouds of heaven" (Did. 16:8). He concludes: Far from suggesting that Did. 16:8 depends upon Matt 24:30, the evidence indicates

that Did. 16:8 represents an independent tradition under whose influence Matthew altered his Marcan source, namely by substituting epi ["on"] for en ["in"] and adding tou ouganou ["the clouds"].113

Tuckett accepts this data but faults the conclusion: A much simpler explanation is available. Matthew's differences from Mark here serve

to align his version of Dan 7:13 with that of the Septuagint. A tendency by Matthew to conform OT allusions to the form of the Septuagint is well-documented. The "tradition under whose influence Matthew altered his Marcan source" need only be the Septuagint text of Dan 7. There is no need at all to postulate a tradition very closely parallel to Mark 13, but independent of Mark and known only to Matthew. Such a theory is a totally unnecessary and complication.114

In like fashion Tuckett suggests alternatives for other changes as well. The call of the trumpet, for example, finds it inclusion as one of many "stock apocalyptic ideas."115 Thus, when Matthew and the Didache include the call of the trumpet, they need not be relying upon a special source unknown to Mark. The same holds true for the Didache's substitution of "the Lord" for the "Son of Man"--Tuckett suggests this could be due to the force of citing Zec 14:5 rather than a special source.116 I agree with everything Tuckett says. Kloppenborg (in the citation above) does make it appear that a written source unknown to Mark and used by Matthew and the framers of the Didache is what he had in mind. As already suggested, the widely dispersed end-time themes orally presented by the prophets and found dispersed in the Scriptures could be all that is needed as the "special source." The very fact that Matthew and the Didache operate using their material to express divergent systems (as explained above) even favors imagining that the common source did not have a compelling logic of its own. Matthew, to be sure, does not move far from the Marcan source which he mildly edits to bring forth his own emphasis. The framers of the Didache , in like fashion, must have done the same even when we have no hard-copy evidence of what was their starting point. The argument of Tuckett, while very ingenious, still fails to convince. How so?

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1. Tuckett can cast doubt as to the existence of a specific written source to which Matthew and the Didache were privy, but he cannot undo the fact that certain metaphors shared by Matthew and the Didache are not found in Mark. 2. Not to acknowledge some shared tradition of "stock apocalyptic ideas" makes the weak linkage between Matt 24 and Did. 16 incomprehensible. The end-time possibilities as expressed in the existent literature are too large and too divergent to allow for mere "accidental" coherence to occur. 3. While Tuckett is correct when he notes that verbal variations do not preclude the availability of written Gospels, the weak verbal linkage between Matt 24 and Did. 16 points in either of two directions: (a) The framers of the Didache knew Matthew but elected to ignore him on all points in favor of enforcing only those select areas where he diverged from Mark; or (b) the framers of the Didache knew nothing of Matthew but they did share some nexus of end-time motifs which each independently used to enforce their own particular hope and expectation. Proposition (a) requires that the framers of the Didache blocked out large themes (e.g., wars, famines, earthquakes, the "Son of Man," proclamation of the good news to "all the nations) precisely because these were found in both Mark and Matthew. Tuckett's thesis, in the end, stumbles on this quaint and unacceptable exclusion. Proposition (b), therefore, provides a much more plausible explanation. CONCLUSION Stepping back, this essay began with a brief history of the scholarly discussion regarding possible sources of the Didache and made some brief comments regarding the interplay between dating and identifying sources. When parallel texts are listed or even compared side by side, a plausible case can always be made for dependence upon Matthew's Gospel. More recently, however, more rigorous criteria have been developed in order to establish dependence. Jefford and Tuckett, for example, make the point that verbal agreement, in and of itself, cannot establish literary dependence since, in every case, one has to consider the possibility that the agreement present is due to both the Didache and Matthew having access to a common Jesus tradition. Thus, to establish dependence, one has to explore, even in cases of close or exact verbal agreement, to what degree the contexts and meanings overlap. Furthermore, one has to explore to what degree shared issues (fasting, praying, almsgiving, correcting, shunning) are defined and resolved along parallel lines. When these investigations were undertaken, however, they progressively revealed areas of wholesale divergence between Matthew and the Didache . In the end, consequently, this present study concludes that Matthew's Gospel and the Didache reveal two religious systems that grew up independent of each other. While they occasionally made use of common sources in defining their way of life, each community shaped these sources in accordance with their own distinctive ends. Hence, in the end, even their common heritage directs attention to their diversity. Following upon this, Court's surmise that "the Didache stands in the tradition of St. Matthew's Gospel,"117 Draper's surmise that "the Didache is the community rule of the Matthean community,"118 and Massaux's surmise that the Didache was created "as a catechetical résumé of the first evangelist"119 cannot stand up to close examination. The Gospel of Matthew and the Didache , point after point, evoke two religious systems addressing common problems in divergent ways. "The Didache lives in an entirely different linguistic universe, and that is true not only of its sources but of its redactor as well."120 In order to provide a basis for examining those like Tuckett who employ an elliptical methodology biased in favor of textuality and immune to the dynamics of oral transmission, this essay appealed to the social dynamics of orality functioning in a society only marginally shaped by textuality.

As long as one remains within Tuckett's presuppositions, it is difficult to fault his observations and his conclusions (as Rordorf amply demonstrates). By way of closing, therefore, I apply to Tuckett some of the sober observations of Paul J. Achtemeier: In these and other matters, one suspects, scholarly suppositions have prevailed that are

simple anachronistic when applied to the actual environment within which documents were written and read. Many such suppositions need to be questioned, and much work remains to be done--and redone!--if we are to form a clear and probable picture of the way the New Testament documents [along with the Didache] were produced and the way they functioned within the oral environment of late Western antiquity.121

Should Didache scholars come to accept the thesis of this essay, the way would be open for an early dating of the Didache and for its interpretation as a well-integrated and self-contained religious system that must be allowed to speak for itself.122 Matthew's Gospel can no longer be called upon to amplify or to distort the unique voice of the Didache . A new era of Didache studies would thus lie open before us. +++ Endnotes+++

* 1. Jean-Paul Audet, La Didache: Instructions des apôtres (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1958).

2. R. Glover, "The Didache's Quotations and the Synoptic Gospels," NTS 5 (1958-59) 12-29.

3. Helmut Koester, Synoptische Uberlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1957).

4. Jonathan A. Draper, "The Jesus Tradition in the Didache," The Jesus Tradition Outside the Gospels, ed. by D. Wenham (Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1984).

5. John S. Kloppenborg, "Didache 16:6-8 and Special Matthaean Tradition," Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlice Wissenshcaft 70 (1979) 54-67.

6. Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities (New York: Paulist Press, 2003).

7. Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: a Commentary, tr. by Linda M. Maloney of the 1989 German orig. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).

8. Willy Rordorf, "Does the Didache Contain Jesus Tradition Independently of the Synoptic Gospels?" Jesus and the Oral Synoptic Tradition, ed. Henry Wansbrough (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 394-423. A summary of these findings is contained in his revision of La doctrine des douze apôtres (Paris: Cerf, 1998).

9. Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress; Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2002).

10. C. M. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition in the Didache," The New Testament in Early Christianity, ed. Jean-Marie Sevrin (Leuven: University Press, 1989), 197-230. Reprinted in The Didache in Modern Research, ed. Jonathan A. Draper (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 92-128.

11. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 230.

12. Clayton N. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Volume 11 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 18-19, 115-118.

13. Vichy Balabanski, Eschatology in the Making: Mark, Matthew and the Didache (Cambridge: University Press, 1997), 210.

14. Adolph Harnack, Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel nebst Untersuchungenzuraltesten Geschichte der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts, (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1984), 82.

15. E.g., Paul Sabatier, La Didachè or L'enseignement des douze apôtres (Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1885).

16. Adolph Harnack, Die Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Altchristlichen Literatur Volume 2 (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1886), 1-70.

17. C. Taylor, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles with Illustrations from the Talmud. Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1886).

18. Robinson's thesis was promoted by R.H. Connolly, "The Didache in Relations to the Epistle of Barnabas," JTS 33 (1932) 237-253 & "Barnabas and the Didache," JTS 38 (1937) 165-167 and J. Muilenburg, The Literary Relations of the Epistle of Barnabas and the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1929).

19. E. J. Goodspeed, "The Didache, Barnabas and the Doctrina," ATR 27 (1945) 228.

20. Goodspeed, "The Didache," 228, 231.

21. Goodspeed, "The Didache," 237.

22. Jean-Paul Audet, "Affinitiés littéraires et doctrinales du `Manuel de Discipline'" Revue biblique 59 (1952) 237-238. Tr. and reprinted, "Literary and Doctrinal Relationships of the `Manual of Discipline,'" The Didache in Modern Research, ed. Jonathan A. Draper (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 129-147.

23. Jean-Paul Audet, La Didache: Instructions des apôtres (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1958) 121-163.

24. Jonathan A. Draper, "The Didache in Modern Research," The Didache in Modern Research, ed. Jonathan A. Draper (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 13 & Niederwimmer, The Didache, 30-40 & Willy Rordorf, "Un chapitre d'ethique judèo-chrétienne: les deux voies," Recherches de science religieuse 60 (1972) 112. Tr. and reprinted, "An Aspect of the Judeo-Christian Ethic: the Two Ways," The Didache in Modern Research, ed. Jonathan A. Draper (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 148-164. For an extended critique of Audet's hypothetical "Jewish catechetical manual," see Milavec, The Didache, 109-113.

25. Audet, La Didache, 121-163.

26. Audet, La Didache, 166-186.

27. Audet, La Didache, 166.

28. Audet, La Didache, 186.

29. Audet, La Didache, 192, 210.

30. Audet, La Didache, 166.

31. Rordorf, "Does the Didache Contain Jesus Tradition," 395.

32. Van de Sandt, for example, notes that "a new consensus is emerging for a date [of final composition] about the turn of the first century CE", and then immediately goes on to say, "if, however, the Didache was redacted that early, dependence of the document on (one of) the Synoptic gospels becomes uncertain" (The Didache, 41). This argument is circular in so far as the growing persuasion of the independence of the Didache has been the leading factor allowed for an early dating of the Didache. The issue of dating, therefore, cannot be securely used to sway the argument as to whether the framers of the Didache made use of a known Gospel.

33. John M. Court, "The Didache and St. Matthew's Gospel," SJT 34/2 (1981) 109-120.

34. Court, "The Didache," 112.

35. Court, "The Didache," 111.

36. J. V. Bartlet, J.V., et al., "The Didache," The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Claredon, 1905), 27.

37. Audet, La Didache, 174 and Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache, tr. by Linda M. Maloney of the 1989 German orig. (Minneapolis: Fortress. 1998) 153.

38. E.g., Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus, 140 and Edouard Massaux, "Le problème de la Didachè," Influence de l'Evangile de saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant saint Irénée (Louvain, 1950), 618. Translated and republished in The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus (Macon, GA: Mercier University Press, 1993) vol. 3, pp. 167-173.

39. Court, "The Didache," 111, n.9.

40. Court's oversight is repeated in Massaux, "Le problème," 607-608 and J. A. Robinson, "The Epístle of Barnabas," 228-230.

41. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus, 33.

42. F. E. Vokes, The Riddle of the Didache. Fact or Fiction, Heresy or Catholicism? (New York: Macmillan Co., 1938) 92.

43. Court, "The Didache," 111.

44. Audet, La Didache, 173.

45. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 207. See n. 7 above.

46. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus, 91.

47. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus, 138.

48. Glover, "The Didache's Quotations," 13-15.

49. M. A. Smith, "Did Justin know the Didache?" Studia Patristica 7 (1966) 287-290.

50. Paul J. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity," JBL 109/1 (1990) 26-27.

51. Hellmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1938) 38.

52. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 360-402.

53. Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, Second Edition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994) 122.

54. Gundry, Matthew, 122-123.

55. Audet, La Didache, 173-174.

56. Audet, La Didache, 172 and Willy Rordorf, La doctrine des douze apôtres, tr. of Greek and textual notes by A. Tuilier (Paris: Cerf, 1978 & 1998) 36-37.

57. When it comes to reproving misbehaving members "not in anger but in peace" (Did. 15:3), Van de Sandt finds "a marked affinity with Qumran [1QS 5:24f] concepts" (The Didache, 353). Thus, when it comes to identifying the "good news" (Did. 15:3) source for this practice, he surmises that this source was closer to 1QS and "at variance with our present gospel of Matthew" (352).

58. One cannot help but notice that Matt 5:23f makes an appeal to reconciliation in which the offending party takes the initiative--very much unlike Matt 18:15-18. Furthermore, since it is unclear whether Matthew's community would have celebrated the eucharist as "a sacrifice," it cannot be supposed that 5:23f ever served to define their eucharistic discipline. Within the context of the Didache, however, even a chance visitor familiar with 5:23f would have called the attention of the community to a saying of Jesus that authorized their eucharistic practice. The absence of 5:23f in the Didache, consequently, presses one to surmise not only that the framers of the Didache were unaware of Matthew's Gospel but that prophets/visitors from Matthew's community never had the occasion to experience the eucharist within a Didache community.

59. E.g., Gundry, Matthew, 82-83.

60. John S. Kloppenborg, "The Transformation of Moral Exhortation in Didache 1-5," The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. Clayton N. Jefford. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 104-108.

61. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 210.

62. Audet, La Didache, 173 imaginatively redone.

63. Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967) 54-55, 231-236, 283-286. To see this played out within formative Judaism, see Raphael Jospe, "The Superiority of Oral over Written Communication," From Ancient Judaism to Modern Judaism, vol. 3, ed. by Jacob Neusner et al. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1981) 127-156.

64. Audet, La Didache, 284.

65. Rordorf, La doctrine, 28.

66. John S. Kloppenborg, "The Transformation of Moral Exhortation in Didache 1-5," The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. Clayton N. Jefford (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 98.

67. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, xxix-xxxi.

68. Willy Rordorf, La doctrine des douze apôtres, tr. of Greek and critical notes by A. Tuilier (Paris: Cerf, 1978 & 1998 rev.) 28 and also Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 17 and Niederwimmer, The Didache, 68.

69. Rordorf, "Does the Didache Contain Jesus Tradition?, 400.

70. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 230.

71. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 225.

72. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 226.

73. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 226.

74. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 227.

75. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 228.

76. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 230.

77. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 230.

78. Rordorf, "Does the Didache Contain Jesus Tradition?, 411.

79. Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1990) 365.

80. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 3.

81. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 9-11 and Ong, The Presence of the Word, 52-53.

82. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 27 and Ong, The Presence of the Word, 231-234.

83. Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 30. See also

John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.1998), 49-52.

84. Within the Didache, the vocabulary and the linguistic structure itself displays a one-sided preference for orality. Thus, the Didache defines the Way of Life and immediately goes on to specify the "training" required for the assimilation "of these words" (Did. 1:3). The novice is told to honor "the one speaking to you the word of God" (Did. 4:1) thereby signalling that oral training was presupposed. Moreover, the novice trembles "at the words which you have heard" (Did. 3:8). In every instance where the Didache cites specific mandates from the Hebrew Scriptures, the oral aspect (as opposed to the written) is highlighted: "It has been said" (Did. 1:6); "The Lord has likewise said" (Did. 9:5); "This is the thing having been said by the Lord" (Did. 14:3); "As it has been said" (Did. 16:7). The same thing can be presumed to hold true when citing the "good news" (Did. 8:2, 11:3, 15:3, 15:4). Accordingly, the Didache gives full attention to speaking rightly (Did. 1:3b, 2:3, 2:5, 4:8b, 4:14, 15:3b) and entirely neglects false or empty writing. At the baptism, the novice is immersed in water "having said all these things beforehand" (Did. 7:1). Thus, when the novice is warned to watch out for those who "might make you wander from this way of training" (Did. 6:1), one surmises that defective words rather than defective texts are implied. The same holds true, when later in the Didache, the baptized are warned only to receive him/her who "should train you in all the things said beforehand" (Did. 11:1) indicating that even the Didache was being heard. Finally, faced with the end time, each one is alerted to the importance of frequently being "gathered together" (Did. 16:2). This enforces an earlier admonition to "seek every day the presence of the saint in order that you may rest upon their words" (Did. 4:2)--thereby signalling once again how verbal exchange was paramount when "seeking the things pertaining to your souls" (Did. 16:2). The one misbehaving, accordingly, was reproved "not in anger [i.e., angry words], but in peace" (Did. 15:3). Those unable to abide by the reproof received were cut off from hearing or being discussed by community members: "Let no one speak to him/her, nor let anyone hear from you about him/her until he/she should repent" (Did. 15:3).

85. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 12-13.

86. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 15-17 and Ong, The Presence of the Word, 58. If the Didache is fundamentally oral in character, then it ought to be heard. In my classes, consequently, I memorize and perform the Didache so that participants can get a feel for the oral flow before they read the text. I furthermore invite participants to make an audio tape that would allow them to hear the Didache before they fall asleep or while they travel back and forth. To explore this further, see www.Didache.info for details.

87. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus, 314.

88. Ian H. Henderson, "Didache and Orality in Synoptic Comparison," JBL 111 (1992) 295-299 & also his "Style-Switching in the Didache: Fingerprint or Argument?" The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. Clayton N. Jefford (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995) 207-209, & Jonathan Draper, "Confessional Western Text-Centered Biblical Interpretation and an Oral or Residual-Oral Context," Semeia 73 (1996) 61-80.

89. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 9-19, 26-27.

90. Aaron Milavec, To Empower as Jesus Did: Acquiring Spiritual Power Through

Apprenticeship (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), 1-24, 79-144.

91. Milavec, The Didache, 98-100.

92. This problem is further impeded by the use of the so-called "criterion of dissimilarity" that functions, from Rudolph Bultmann onward, to allow modern critical scholars to discern the authentic sayings of Jesus. The application of this norm serves laudible purposes within the quest for the historical Jesus; yet, for our purposes here, this norm inadvertently serves to blur the "Jewishness" of Jesus in favor of emphasizing his "uniqueness" and "divergence" from normative Judaism. In contrast to this modern agenda, the Didache recalls a period in which the entirety of the Way of Life was perceived as coming from Jesus and as serving to incorporate gentiles into the future of Israel. For details, see Milavec, The Didache, 109-113.

93. Jesus was remembered as having proclaimed "the good news of God" (Mk 1:14; Rom 1:1, 15:16; 2 Cor 2:7; 1 Thes 2:2, 9; 1 P 4:17). Thus, in each of the four places wherein the "good news" (euaggelion) is mentioned as a source (8:2, 11:3, 15:3, and 15:4), there is nothing to suggest that this term refers to a book or "a Gospel." Nonetheless, "most scholars agree" that the term "good news" found in the Didache "refers to some written gospel" (Van de Sandt, The Didache, 352). When examined closely, however, "nothing in the context of these references indicate the presence of materials which were derived from any known gospel in writing" (50, n.135). Van de Sandt thus surmises that the term "gospel" within the Didache can be "best understood as a reference to oral or written collections of sayings" (50, n.135). Niederwimmer correctly notes that these sayings did not pertain to "the Christological kerygma" or "the epiphany, death, and resurrection of Jesus for our sake" (The Didache, 50) but to a set of practical rules known to members of the Didache communities. For details, see Milavec, The Didache, 720-723.

94. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 1-48 & Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel, 144-148.

95. Bentley Layton argues that an editor, wishing to confirm that the anonymous material found in the Didache was indeed apostolic, decided to plagerize from the canonical sources but then to alter those passages borrowed in order to "disguise the fact of plagiarization" ("The Sources, Date, and Transmission of Didache 1.3b-2.1," HTR 61 [1968] 372).

96. Balabanski, Eschatology in the Making, 182-205; Harnack, Die Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, 60; Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus, 85-90; George Eldon Ladd, The Eschatology of the Didache (Doctoral disseration: Harvard University, 1949), 3, 99; Edouard Massaux, "Le problème de la Didachè," Influence de l'Evangile de saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant saint Irénée (Louvain, 1950), 631-638; Vokes, The Riddle, 111-115

97. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 209, n.5.

98. B. C. Butler, "The Literary Relations of Didache, Ch. XVI," JTS 11 (1960) 277.

99. Gundry, Matthew, 488.

100. Details can be found in Aaron Milavec, "Saving Efficacy of the Burning Process in Didache 16.5," The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. Clayton N. Jefford (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 131-155.

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101. Gundry, Matthew, 488-489.

102. Gundry, Matthew, 488.

103. Gundry, Matthew, 488.

104. George Eldon Ladd, The Eschatology of the Didache (Doctoral disseration: Harvard University, 1949), 22.

105. Glover, "The Didache's Quotations," 25, 28-29.

106. Butler, "The Literary Relations," 283.

107. Kloppenborg, "Didache 16:6-8," 66.

108. Kloppenborg, "Didache 16:6-8," 66.

109. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 198.

110. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 207.

111. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 207-208.

112. Kloppenborg, "Didache 16:6-8," 59-60.

113. Kloppenborg, "Didache 16:6-8," 63.

114. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 205.

115. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 208.

116. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition," 205.

117. Court, "The Didache," 112.

118. Jonathan A. Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles in the Didache Community," Novum Testamentum 33/4 (1991) 372.

119. Massaux, "Le problème," 644.

120. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 48.

121. Achtemeier, "Omne verbum sonat," 27.

122. Up to this point, a unified reading of the Didache has been impeded by the prevailing assumption that the Didache was created in two or three stages, with each redactor splicing together pre-existing sources with only a minimum of editing. In constrast, my volume endeavors to recover the organic unity of the "oral" Didache such that the ordering of topics and the progression within each topic can again be appreciated as following an inherent logic and pastoral pedagogy from beginning to end. See Milavec, The Didache, preface.